Earthquakes: Nucleation, Triggering, and Relationships With Aseismic Processes

Earthquakes remain unpredictable, despite decades of intense investigations into possible precursory phenomena. The main difficulty lies in our incomplete knowledge of the state of stress on active faults at seismogenic depths, and a full understanding of how rupture initiates and stops in a complex medium characterized by a variable stress field acting on complex fault geometries. In the last decade, however, great advances have converged towards a much more complete picture of earthquake-related processes. The quality and quantity of seismic data, as well as their diffusion to research scientists through open-data policies, have been much improved, most recently owing to the development of very dense and / or very sensitive seismic networks, and a gain in location accuracy; the ubiquitous nature of aseismic slip has become apparent; and recent mega-thrust and continental earthquakes have provided the seismological community with very rich datasets that help illuminate possible relationships between seismic and aseismic processes. This school will follow-on of the 1st and 2nd Cargèse school on earthquakes, that were held in November 2014 and October 2017 (see https://eos.org/meeting-reports/exploring-earthquakes-slow-slip-and-triggering and https://eos.org/meeting-reports/how-earthquakes-start-and-stop for reports on this school). Each edition gathers about 100 participants, mainly PhD students and post-docs, representing about twenty countries. The goal remains to give an accurate snapshot of our current understanding of earthquakes, in the light of recent advances. About 20 scientists from all around the world (mostly Europe and US), at the cutting-edge of earthquake research, will give lectures, covering various topics related to recent developments in earthquake processes, including nucleation, triggering, rupture, and the seismic cycle as a whole. The school is intended to stimulate the emergence of a much wider understanding of the current issues and progress among young scientists (PhDs and post-docs), and will thus facilitate future collective progress towards earthquake preparedness and forecasting, as well as to the development of international research networks.